Christos Tsiolkas and Tara June Winch join our book club to discuss unmissable Australian books
A friend once confessed to me that on long haul international flights she has a policy of only watching Australian-made in-flight entertainment, to catch up on Australian film and TV that she’s missed when not at altitude. There’s something about this approach that leaves a bad taste in the mouth. A whiff of cringe if you will. Watching Australian is like taking medicine, a chore that requires discipline.
Immortalised by critic AA Philips in his 1950 essay of the same name, “the cultural cringe” is a more pervasive, more enduring analysis of Australian culture than even Donald Horne’s misappropriated The Lucky Country. It points squarely to the tendency to devalue and underestimate local creative output. While we may be beyond the days of our cultural gatekeepers thinking of London as home, next time you’re reading the press releases of our local funders and producers of the arts, look out for superlatives of the “world-class” variety. The cringe is never far away.
Related: The Australian book you've finally got time for: On the Beach by Nevil Shute
But if our establishment prizes, our school curriculums and university English courses have been a little slow to come to the table on the depth and breadth of Australian literary voices out there, publishers and readers have not. The new series of articles Guardian Australia is running, where celebrated local authors share the Australian book that means something significant to them, alerts readers to the unmissable books out there, and offers some way to divine a path through crowded bookshelves and ever-expanding libraries.
So we’re trying something a little bit different in the second iteration of the Guardian Australia book club, to be held at 1pm on Friday 12 June over Zoom. Rather than nominating a single title, we’re calling on you to bring to the table your unmissable piece of Australian literature: the formative and the transformative, the national classic or the personal touchstone, the beauties rich and rare.
Your pick might not have a page set on Australian soil. It might be a rollicking space opera. Or it might be Dorothea Mackellar singing the praises of a sunburnt country. Australianness is in the eye of the beholder and our literature, like our country, contains multitudes. We’re going to have a broader conversation about Australian literature. About the authors who we read, who we love, whose books we thrust on others.
And to do it we’re going to be joined by two authors whose books lay significant claim to be part of any such discussion.
Christos Tsiolkas’s sixth novel, Damascus, has big ideas about faith and identity, about humanity and justice on explosive and indelible display. Tara June Winch’s The Yield swept the NSW premier’s book awards, and is on the Miles Franklin longlist. It’s a soaring and transcendent second novel, about land and language, stories and histories, family and identity.
Related: The Australian book you've finally got time for: Carpentaria by Alexis Wright | Tara June Winch
Both Damascus and The Yield are astonishing, life-changing works of literature. They show us what Australian literature can produce, how it can break open our ideas of who we are as a culture and as a society. But if that’s not enough, Christos and Tara have both contributed their own picks for unmissable Australian classics to recommend to you. Tara has already written on Alexis Wright’s Carpentaria, and next week Christos will be steering readers to a Randolph Stowe classic.
So consider those our starting texts:
The Yield by Tara June Winch
Damascus by Christos Tsiolkas
Carpentaria by Alexis Wright
The Merry-Go-Round in the Sea by Randolph Stowe
I’ll get the conversation with these two authors started and then invite you to join us, to discuss any of those books, ask questions of our guests about the tradition to which their writing belongs, or proffer up the unmissable and beloved Australian books that have shaped you.
The very notion of a national literature might be pointless and limiting, might try to impose artificial constraints on our understanding of a work of art and the myriad and complex influences that underpin it.
But celebrating our local artists and their work couldn’t be more important, especially at a time when economic rationalism and market forces make it harder for them to build a career. Our land is girt by stories. Hope to see you next Friday.
Guardian Australia’s next book club will be held on Friday 12 June at 1pm, over Zoom, hosted by Australia At Home. To register click here, or stay tuned for the video highlights.
• What’s the Australian book that you think is unmissable? Add it to the comments below – or join us on Zoom.
